MMM Nigeria: Is It Still Open For Registration, Do They Have An Office?

MMM Nigeria: Mavrodi Mundial Movement, popularly known as MMM, is a financial network where members provide and get financial help from other participants.

MMM is structured in a way that participants receive a 30% reward of the amount they provided after 30 days. Unlike bank transactions, there is no interest rate in MMM, rather members are rewarded with Mavro after providing help. Mavro is the acceptable currency in MMM and it is basically used in measuring the growth of the help a member provided.

As founders of MMM would have the world believe, Mavros grow by 30% in 30 days – that is, (1% daily). Its calculation is done by calculating the amount provided multiplied by 1.30. For instance, if a member donates N10,000, it will be multiplied by 1.30, which is 10,000 x 1.30 = 13,000. So, after 30 days, such participants will be paid N13,000. The additional 3000, as explained by the creators, is raised from the donations made by other members.

MMM was founded by Mr. Sergey Mavrodi, Vyacheslav Mavrodi (his brother), and one Olga Melnikova, in 1989. The trio coined the name of the scheme from the first letters of their surnames. After several failed attempts to hold on following a crisis that broke out in 1992, Mavrodi successfully launched the MMM Ponzi scheme in February 1994, promising prospective investors annual returns of up to 3,000%. The scheme was re-opened as “MMM Global” in 2011.

MMM founder, Mavrodi, who was born Sergei Panteleevich Mavrodi on August 11, 1955, in Moscow, Russia, was arrested in February 2003 for fraud case against him. He was eventually convicted of fraud in April 2007 was and given a sentence of four-and-a-half years. He died on 26 March 2018 of heart problems at age 62.

MMM Nigeria: A Brief History & How It Crashed

The Ponzi scheme was launched in Nigeria in 2016. They initially began wooing Nigerians with their aggressive media campaign, promising them a monthly investment reward of 30%. In the long run, they began recruiting MMM staff, who in turn, took the awareness to another level.

By the time MMM crashed in Nigeria, over three million Nigerians were direct and indirect investors in the programme. Hoodwinked into believing the scheme is here to stay forever, many Nigerians invested with a large sum of money and even went as far as referring others to the money doubling network.

MMM founder Mavrodi

It was reported by the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) that an ‎estimated 3 million Nigerians lost about N18 billion in the viral Ponzi scheme. The MMM drama began sometime in December 2016 when payments to investors were suspended by organizers over an alleged “heavy workload”, leading to pandemonium and bitter worries in the country.

As promised, the scheme was successfully relaunched in January 2017 – a move that restored the confidence of many people and subsequently pulled new members to the platform. However, millions of Nigerians began sensing danger when the scheme came up with new rules on how to provide and get help. Millions were kept waiting for their payments and were eventually disappointed after the money doubling network finally crashed.

MMM Nigeria: Is It Still Open For Registration?

For now, it’s very difficult to tell if the Ponzi scheme is not open for registration since nothing meaningful or helpful has been heard about it in the recent time. But there are strong indications, MMM Nigeria has cycled into oblivion.

During its active days, participants usually flock to social media outlets to share the latest trends about it but ever since it crashed, little or nothing has been heard or read about the Ponzi scheme.

Social media outlets such as Twitter used to be flooded with members’ tweets about either the Mavro, payments, challenges about getting paid and whatnot but now, everything, the hype and all that, has fizzled out completely, indicating that the scheme is no longer active. For what’s worth, MMM is not a bank, the scheme does not directly collect participants’ money, neither is it an online business.

Do They Have An Office?

MMM has no office in Nigeria because every transaction, starting from pairing of members to payments and acknowledgment of payments, are carried out online. Many people have tried severally to uncover if the brains behind MMM Nigeria actually meet somewhere but every effort to find Mavrodi’s branch or head office in Nigeria proved abortive.